Today is the day Wikipedia, Reddit and others go black. I don’t know if most are aware of what the SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act actually entails, but I thought to share a few insights.

If you go to Google today, you see they too are trying to make a point, but since the bottom line is all to important at this stage of their business life, rather than go dark, they decided to do something worthwhile. They have an actual “call to action” where you the visitor can fill out an online form to inform congress that you are against this legislation.

“There’s no need to make American social networks, blogs and search engines censor the Internet or undermine the existing laws that have enabled the Web to thrive, creating millions of U.S. jobs.” In a time when we are in need of keeping America’s jobs – this is yet another big factor in voting against this.

My hope is that this bill will be refined and the right policies to protect Intellectual Property will be put into place.

I have read many books on the topic, and still reading. Over the years in this industry if I have learned nothing at all, it’s this: Lesson #1 – You really DON’T know it all, keep learning, keep listening and keep reading! Though, you will likely run across those who think who they are.

There are many good resources out there. I have a good place to begin in the blogroll to the right.

1) If your looking for a good updated, covers it all and more, from a consultant’s perspective go and get your hands on this book – Search Engine Optimization Secrets, by Danny Dover (met the guy, very nice and knows this stuff well). There are many things to like about this book, one simply is, its very easy to read. It’s not some technical manual on coding, but rather has tons of “cheat sheets” and best practice chapters. I would highly recommend this book to anyone thinking about SEO or one who’s been in the industry for several years.

2) If your looking for another solid SEO book, The Art of SEO  a good focus on marketing and integration of offline and online. Correcting myths and misconceptions to the basics.

3) If your serious at all about SEO you MUST read Landing Page Optimization by Tim Ash. I had the luxury of working with Tim when he reviewed our ecommerce site, and this goes to rule #1, there were things he brought up that I hadn’t thought of. Smart and should be in every search professional’s library.

There are many others of course, but the three I mentioned above are for those who need to read something fast and acquire a good level of SEO knowledge.